AGRICULTURAL MONOGAMY. 5 



activity. Century follows century, but he does not 

 change. Again, the shepherd tribes roam from pasture 

 to pasture : their flocks and herds yield them food and 

 dress, and houses of hair, as they call their tents. 

 They have little work to do : their time is almost 

 entirely their own. They pass long hours in slow 

 conversation, in gazing at the heavens, in the sensuous 

 passive oriental reverie. The intellectual capacities of 

 such men are by no means to be despised, as those 

 who have lived among them are aware. They are 

 skilful interpreters of nature's language, and of the 

 human heart : they compose beautiful poems ; their 

 religion is simple and sublime ; yet time passes on, 

 and they do not advance. The Arab sheik of the 

 present day lives precisely as Abraham did three 

 thousand years ago ; the Tartars of central Asia are 

 the Scythians whom Herodotus described. 



It is the first and indispensable condition of human 

 progress that a people shall be married to a single 

 land : that they shall wander no more from one region 

 to another, but remain fixed and faithful to their soil. 

 Then if the Earth-wife be fruitful, she will bear them 

 children by hundreds and by thousands ; and then, 

 Calamity will come and teach them by torture to invent. 



The Egyptians were islanders, cut off from the 

 rest of the world by sand and sea. They were 

 roQted in their valley ; they lived entirely upon its 

 fruits ; and happily these fruits sometimes failed. 

 Had they always been able to obtain enough to eat, 

 they would have remained always in the semi-savage 

 state. 



It may appear strange that Egypt should have suf- 

 fered from famine, for there was no country in the ancient 

 world where food was so abundant and so cheap. 



